WORKING OF A POOR-LAW IN IRELAND.
Tan Morning Chronicle endeavours to supply the blank left in its argument for a peasant proprietary and against a poor-law in Ireland, by advancing proof of the assertion " that a poor-law would rather prevent than promote the conversion of small hold- ers in Ireland into day-labourers, or, which amounts to the same thing, the introduction of the English system of large farms." The reply is very satisfactory, apart from the terms of courtesy towards our own journal, because, with the fairness characteristic of real ability, our adversary has taken pains at his task and has set forth his reasons in perfect clearness. " Such a law," it is ob- served, "would influence both landlords and tenants " ; and the writer proceeds to examine its operation on both those classes. We shall endeavour to reproduce his arguments one by one, and to answer each as it comes.
If it would be for the interest of landlords to introduce the large farm system, says the Chronicle, they have the strongest motives to do so without a poor-law : and to show that they would, the actual state of the agricultural system and its evils are described, —the larger ratio of rent out of smaller produce, the absence of landlord investment, the redundancy and inefficiency of labour, and so forth. "The majority have thought it not their interest" to make the immediate sacrifice for prospective advantages. This, we would reply, is an admission that the landlords have not " the strongest motives,"—which, with the class described, would be motives of immediate advantage. They get the largest ratio of rent out of a smaller produce ; to get that larger ratio, they sacrifice their own advantage in the long run, the welfare of the community, and the very safety of the country ; not scrupling to seize the advantage at the expense of promoting the most gi- gantic system of pauperism known in the world. This perverse improvidence, betraying at once self-interest and social duties, is an exhibition unparalleled in history. The dictate of true self- interest is as plain as the Chronicle describes it to be ; a fact which proves a morbid absence of " the strongest motives." The landlords of this class, in truth, lack both motives and means : they have not capital sufficient to effect the change or to support themselves in the interval ; they have not the self denial to forego the nominal and immediate advantage of the high ratio of rents, for the calculated prospective advantage of a lower ratio of rent out of larger produce. In so far as they lack means, they are simply unlit for the business of landlordism. It is quite evident that to many of this class a new charge upon the land, which could not be evaded or compromised, would give the coup de grace : the whole language of their countrymen, the arguments ad misericordiam against poor-rates chargeable on landlords, and " confiscation" of estates—the notorious facts, all conspire to substantiate what may be called it priori reasoning on the matter. To a proportionate extent a poor-law would force such landlords to avail themselves of the contemplated bill for the sale of en- enmbered estates, and would drive them into other avocations with better chances of worldly success ; for, after all, no business is more hopeless than that of a bankrupt landowner.
As to motives that will operate. The tenant (labouring) class is beaten down to the lowest possible amount of income : that class by its competition sets the standard of rents ; landlords therefore cannot force those classes to pay more : poor-rates to any amount, mediately or immediately, must be subtracted from the rent, until the tenant class, as well as the landlords, enjoy a surplus income above that sufficing for bare existence : a poor-law therefore will, at first, subtract from the amount of rent—diminish that high ratio which is the irresistible bait that lures the lower class of Irish landlords; it will annul the premium on the bad system. A considerable minority, it is admitted, have tried to consoli- date farms; but "hitherto the tendency to consolidate has been powerfully checked by terrorism, and by the inability to provide for the ejected tenants." The answers to this double position are not recondite. The "terrorism" is itself the fruit of terror : brought to the lowest state of existence, on the verge of starvation, the bulk of the tenant (labouring) class in Ireland knows no gua- rantee for daily food except a rude convulsive hold on its primitive source, the land. Secure to the Irish tenant (labourer) a subsist- ence independently of the land, and you remove his motive to keep up the terrorism. Other modes of putting down terrorism in Ireland, however varied and multiplied, have failed. There was a terrorism once in England : forcible modes of suppression failed ; but it melted away under the Poor-law of Elizabeth : that kind of suppression has never yet been tried in Ireland. Reason and experience concur in justifying the belief that a poor-law in Ireland would abolish that obstacle to consolidation, mstead of confirming it. As to providing for tenants. "How," it is asked, "could the obligation to maintain the expelled tenantry be anything but a strong motive against ejecting them ?" There are two classes of landlords—the stupid, and the intelli- gent : we have already considered the case of the stupid, and Aow have to deal only with the better-informed. With them
there would be, of course, the admitted sacrifices of the change— an investment for a future profit. The redundancy of tenants (labourers) keeps up a bad system—keeps Ireland poor, forbids improvement, enterprise, and wealth. The redundant tenant- labourers cannot be destroyed—granted : but a better state of things would repay the cost of their temporary support, and would supply various kinds of employment other than agricul- tural to absorb a large portion of the disengaged labour. But, immediately, " what is to be done with the crowd of small tenants?" Colonize with them.
The Chronicle proceeds to consider the law as it would influence tenants. We said that "it would tend to keep wages at least as high as the level of bare subsistence, and would thus reconcile . the poorest agriculturist to be a labourer rather than a holder." Reconcile, we say, not " induce." Our contemporary says that two-fifths of the peasantry " are almost disengaged from the land, and cultivate it only as conacre." That employment is the very reverse of being disengaged from the land : it is the settle- ment of every separate family on a separate minimum parcel of land ; it is the most intimate of unions—an atomic union, and is a true " ascriptio g.lebEe." The Chronicle does not believe that a poor-law, or any statute, "can keep up wages." We never asserted anything of the kind. We said, indeed, that a poor-law introduced into Ireland would tend to raise wages, not by the inherent force of a decree, but be- cause it would help, along with other measures, to remove causes which tend in the opposite direction. We need not repeat the ex- planation which we gave last week, and which our antagonist does not answer. Suffice it to say here, that if you otherwise provide for the redundant population of Ireland, you relieve every really efficient labourer from the competition of a pauper; a com- petition which in Ireland lowers wages by introducing into "the higgling of the market" an element not pertinent to the mer- cantile competition that determines the value of a commodity. In this matter we do not reason on mere speculation ; for we ob- serve that the Poor-law of England, which allots an amount far exceeding Irish wages as the maintenance of a pauper, is accom- panied by a higher rate of wages, competition in the labour mar- ket remaining perfectly free. If not induced to leave their holdings, perhaps the small- tenantry of Ireland might be driven out ; but our ingenious ad- versary cannot think how that could be done safely. As to the possibility of doing it, that is admitted. We may remark, that the facility for such a process would be largely increased by two very proper provisions, quite analogous to the English law—a vagrancy act, and prohibition of relief to persons retaining any usufructuary possession of land, in parcels however small. Re- fuse relief to the holder of conacre, or you maintain the Irish "pauper warren" and apply to it the English standard of poor-. rates.
As to the safety. We believe relief might be safely refused to the small landholder, if the relief were sufficient, and the right to it were clearly and intelligibly established. Let the principle be that all land shall pay rates ; totally separating rate-payers and rate-receivers. Whether by poor-relief, or by colonization, or by any other of the many auxiliary measures which ought to accom- pany a poor-law, secure for the bulk of the Irish people a better condition than that now enjoyed by the bulk of the Irish people, and there would not be much question as to the ultimate safety and peacemaking of such a change. No doubt, in the interval, the process might forcibly exhibit the difficulties and disturbances always associated with the mere idea of social change : such a possibility implies sufficient means for a forcible preservation of the peace. It any necessary public measure is expected to breed. a temporary disturbance, you send a sufficient body of police, whether in blue coats or red. Such a protection would be no novelty in Ireland : the novelty would be, that under cover of that protection a really pacific process would be actively at work. Incidentally, the Chronicle raises the whole question of a poor law- " As to a poor-law, we know of no principle on which it can be safely based but this: taking the existing. standard of living amongst any people, you must make the condition of pauperism such as not to attract, but to repel the inde- pendent labourer, as long as he can by any shift or contrivance do without relief."
Our contemporary does not discuss this point, nor will we : it is too large for incidental discussion. We will only here note our dissent from the assumption that the rule laid down is the " principle " of any plan of poor-relief. A rule in abatement of a measure cannot be the principle of that measure. Respect for an able antagonist has urged us to do the best we could, with our more limited space, to improve the opportunity for showing that some of the objections to a poor-law in Ireland which bear most upon the difficulties of transition are not so for mid able as they look. In England those objections are princi- pally urged by an influential class of speculative thinkers, who have curiously worked themselves into a theoretical dread of any poor-relief. Some of them go so far as to maintain that the class of the destitute must not be recognized by the State—must be ignored. Both the alarm and the studied ignorance are more fan- ciful than practical. You cannot ignore an indigent and exigent multitude. In England we gave up the attempt more than two centuries ago, to the great increase of our peace. In Ireland we have continued the attempt to this day—with what results we all know. A poor-relief is assumed to be destructive of motives to industry. A priori, such an assumption is combated by analyti- cal investigation of motives; on which it will readily be seen, that the dread of starvation, the rude instinct to seize subsistence which a poor-relief annuls, is no efficient motive to industry, in the civilized sense of the word. The sure motives to industry are, the innate sense of duty, the love of "bettering one's-self," the desire to enjoy the personal freedom of an independent state, and the pleasure in exercising the individual will. A posteriori, the working of motives and the unsubstantial nature of the alarm are not unaptly illustrated by a comparison of Ireland, its na- tional poverty, its unthrifty idleness, and its no poor-law, with England, its poor-law, its industry, and prosperity.
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